MBBS aspirants move HC as varsity increases quota seats

MBBS aspirants from four medical colleges of Haryana, who failed to make it to the merit list owing to the implementation of Special Backward Class (SBC) and Economic Backward Persons (EBP) reservation, have approached the Punjab and Haryana high court.

MBBS aspirants from four medical colleges of Haryana, who failed to make it to the merit list owing to the implementation of Special Backward Class (SBC) and Economic Backward Persons (EBP) reservation, have approached the Punjab and Haryana high court.

They urged the court to scrap the 74 seats reserved at the Pandit Bhagwat Dayal Sharma University of Health Sciences (PBDSUHS) for SBC and EBP candidates, which was notified by the university on July 1.

They demanded it to be given to meritorious students who got their All-India rankings as prescribed by the NEET bulletin at the time of conducting the examination.

As per details, the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) invited applications for MBBS seats for conducting the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET) in December 2012.

From Haryana, nearly 18,000 aspirants applied for the test and at that time (according to the NEET bulletin), the reservation in Haryana medical colleges was limited to 50% - 20% seats were reserved for Scheduled Caste, 27% for Other Backward Class and 3% for handicapped candidates.

The aspirants said according to the NEET bulletin, the applications were invited in accordance with this reservation criteria and rest of the candidates, including SBC and EBP, also filled the forms, according to the set norms, as the unreserved candidates.

All candidates, barring reserved categories candidates, included in 50% were to be allotted seats in the state medical colleges according to their All-India rankings.

Further, the aspirants said that surprisingly on July 1 this year, the PBDSUHS had released prospectus and announced that 20% seats, other than 50% quota, had been reserved for the SBP and EBP classes and admissions would take place accordingly.

Sources in the PBDSUHS said: "The NEET conducted the test on May 5 on 50% reservation and declared the results on June 5 on 50% reservation."

Expressing surprise, they said how could the university reserve 20% extra seats by introducing new rules in the current session of MBBS admissions.

On the state government reservation notification to award 20% reservation to the SBC and EBP, sources said that the state government order was limited to providing jobs under reservation to SBC and EBP, while the admissions to educational institutes were to be done according to the prospectus.